I'm Definitely in a Basement

I'm Definitely in a Basement is a horror game about escaping a place you wake up trapped in, tied to a chair behind a locked door. A camera watches as Morrow and Venn take notes on your attempts to get out. The wall above the door is marked with tally scratches, some of them yours.

Dig through the strata

You carve tunnels through earth with real geometry and collision, making passages around obstacles that you can return through. Grab ledges to climb a shaft of five strata, each stranger than the last. If you get lost, hold H to follow a red thread to your next objective; a hand-drawn map fills in as you explore.

The things below

The blind Digger hears your cuts, screams and footsteps, then opens tunnels of its own to reach you. It stays still while you look at it, but moves when you look away. Stone jizō line the galleries and face you when you turn back. An underground konbini has buzzing fluorescent lights and a vending machine that gives you something you did not ask for; at five in the afternoon, a loudspeaker tells all good children to go home.

The buried house

A service lift takes you to a house from your other life, rebuilt from memory and wrong. It has tatami, paper fusuma and oshiire closets, and is searched room by room by The One Who Waits, a woman in a white kimono with impossibly long hair who hums your lullaby.

Find fuses and hide in closets without letting her see you enter. Salt on thresholds holds her back, while an ofuda on a door makes her burn it before opening it. She learns from your hiding habits: if you always use the same closet, she will head straight for it next time. In the basement bathroom, knock three times on the third stall.

Encounters on the climb

• The climber: something with no legs drags itself up the rock behind you on its elbows.
• Kisaragi Station: at the end of the climb, you board a train that should not exist. Its next stop is not on any map.
• Kagome kagome: children sing in a circle. When the song ends, it asks who is standing right behind you; do not turn around.
• The Warden: it wears a paper lantern where its head should be. Run if its light touches you.

What each life leaves

Your previous attempts leave marks: tunnels already dug, your shovel where it caught you last time, and a note in your own handwriting that knows exactly what you did. A film camera's flash is your only weapon. You develop its photos in a darkroom; some show someone standing behind you, and then someone is.

There is no death: if something catches you, you are dragged back to the start of the tunnels. You can turn off sudden scares in Settings.